The BBC & Boris: a rotten ambush.

Will they never learn?

 

Just when the reputation of the BBC has sunk as low as it is possible to get, it has once more resorted to the dirty trick of the ambush interview.

 

This time it was the turn of Boris Johnson.

 

Bojo was enticed into the interview on the pretext that it was about the state of London and the effects of the Budget. Instead he was subjected to an offensive cross-examination about his personal life, in particular his affair with Petronella Wyatt, and his association with one Darius Guppy.

 

The Wyatt story has been around for more than 10 years. It was common knowledge even before the Red Tops got hold of it. Michael Howard booted him out of the Shadow Cabinet for denying it.

 

This in itself poses two questions. What earthly business was it of Howard’s to enquire into Boris’s sex life? The idea is especially rich, coming from a successor to a Tory Prime Minister who was regularly bonking a member of the Cabinet. Sex is a topic that politicians should steer clear of; it was that wise old man Lord Denning who said that nobody’s sex life can withstand close scrutiny.

 

And would not any gentleman deny a liaison with a woman to avoid distressing her?

 

If it had been a ‘gay’ story nobody would have batted an eyelid.

 

The Guppy story has even more whiskers. It has been in the public domain for nearly 20 years. It was a story that had no legs. Boris is alleged to have given, in a phone call from Guppy, the address of a man whom he wished to beat-up. As far as we know, neither happened. Maybe the real story was whether Boris’s phone was bugged.

 

The interviewer then called Boris ‘a nasty piece of work’. This was abuse, plain and simple.

 

A bit of pot and kettle’ there, then.

 

What was the BBC’s motivation? There is a documentary about Boris on TV this week. Perhaps it was a softening-up for a forthcoming hatchet job. Perhaps it was the BBC in its role of Guardian with pictures trying to discredit Boris in case one day he should lead the Tories to an annihilation of Labour in a future election.

 

But one thing puzzles me greatly. Why do media-savvy politicians as fall for it, especially as Boris is a highly-experienced media professional?.

 

I remember years ago that the TV news tried it on Sir John Nott, Maggie’s Defence Minister.

 

He rose to his feet, declared that he would tolerate no more of this nonsense, took off his mike, and swept out, leaving his interviewer open-mouthed and the producer with a nasty hole in his live programme.

 

That’s the way to do it!